# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1864_S330
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

330 The Doctrine of the Lutheran Church Concerning Sunday.

to know God, let him make use of the holy day for the reason that he may
hear the Word of God on it. But if he wants to be altogether insolent and
reckless, let him go to the devil, like those who accomplish nothing else on
the holy day than gorging, guzzling, and carousing day and night.
That is the crude and outward sense of this commandment, which
does not bind us, but is free to us, and stands within our power and free
choice, whether we wish to observe the holy day or not. If my neighbor is
in need, I let the holy day go, and serve my neighbor. But if he needs
instruction from the Word of God, I withdraw myself from work.
Therefore the pope has no power to command that Sunday, or any other
day, must necessarily be observed. We do observe it, however, because
we need to learn God's Word. That the Sabbath is free, Christ shows
again and again in the Gospel, and where he interprets the Sabbath. . . .
The spiritual holy day, however, is the true Sabbath, which is kept when
the heart keeps the true Sabbath, which is the highest and truly spiritual
work of this commandment, comprising the whole nature of man.
This Sabbath Christ prefigured for us in the grave; there he kept the
Sabbath rightly; there he lies in rest and festival, abstaining from all
works. He does not see, he does not hear, he does not sleep, he does not
wake, he does not eat, he does not drink, he does not digest, he moves
neither tongue nor veins, neither hand nor foot, he does not stand, he
does not go.
Whoever now wants to keep the true spiritual Sabbath must be
wholly dead with Christ. No one, moreover, will keep it rightly unless he
is truly dead. But we begin to keep the true Sabbath here when our old
Adam ceases from all his works, reason, will, desires, and lust, all of
which must die and cease in the true Sabbath. And everything that is in
us shall be godly, as Paul says to the Galatians in the second chapter: I
am dead to the law through the law, that I might live to God. I am
crucified with Christ. I live, yet now not I, but Christ lives in me. For
what I live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, etc. That is a
proper observance for Christians. Likewise Galatians 5[:6? / properly
6:14]: Through Christ the world is crucified to me, and I to the world;
each is dead to the other; the world does not know what I do, and I do
not know what the world does; neither knows the other; everything is
dead and clean cut off. This Sabbath, however, is finally kept rightly only
when we have died.
If we now live in this way, as Paul writes of himself, then everything
becomes godly — hands and feet, tongue, ears, eyes, body and soul, all
thoughts; and whatever I then do, I am certain that God does it in me.
When I practice my trade and work, I know that it pleases God, for it is
his divine command. And when I am thus certain that it pleases God,
then these are not my works, but God's works; for I do them in obedience
to God, and do what pleases God, and